TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 4-FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 4 329 the following sections were run with and without the outliers removed, and it was determined that the outliers did not significantly affect the results (the only exception to the outliers affecting the results is described in the results section). As such, the data analyses presented are using the remaining 1,315 participants after the removal of the outliers. As the data set is too large for statistical normality tests to be accurate, skewness and kurtosis values were examined. The data set without the outliers had skewness (.208) and kurtosis (-.018), both values within the normal range. A visual inspection of the descriptive q-q line further supported the conclusion that the data is normally distributed. Results Overall Mental Health Knowledge Gain The first research question, asking whether the MHF program training significantly increased overall knowledge of mental health and mental health facilitation, was assessed using a paired sample t-test. The result of this analysis showed that there was a significant difference ( t = -35.90, p = 0.000) between pretest ( M = 37.64, SD = 5.58) and posttest ( M = 41.17, SD = 5.24) scores. This analysis confirms the hypothesis that the MHF program training significantly increases the scores of participants from pretest to posttest evaluation. Initial Mental Health Knowledge and Training Gains The second research question investigated whether the starting knowledge of participants, as measured in the pretest, affected the training gains made between the pretest and posttest. To address this research question, four categories based on pretest scores were generated. A descriptive analysis was conducted to determine the quartiles of the pretest scores, and the quartiles were used to define the categories. The authors determined that quartiles are an effective means of dividing the pretest scores into four groups given that the relationships between the groups are clearly linked to the overall distribution of pretest scores. The pretest scores ranged from 15–50 (the range of possible scores was 0–50), and quartiles were generated in order to better understand the effects of MHF training on participants with low, medium-low, medium-high, and high MHF knowledge going into the training. The quartile scores were as follows: low < 34 ( N = 317, M = 5.34, SD = 4.23), medium-low = 34 to 38 ( N = 369, M = 4.13, SD = 3.62), medium-high = 39 to 42 ( N = 340, M = 3.06, SD = 2.69), and high > 42 ( N = 289, M = 1.35, SD = 2.04). To compare the four groups and answer the second research question, a one-way ANOVA was used. The analysis showed that the differences between the scores of the four categories are significant ( F [3, 1311] = 81.05, p = 0.000). A post-hoc Tukey HSD test allowed for a more detailed understanding of the difference between the four groups. The Tukey HSD test results indicated significant differences between all four groups. The details of the differences between means in the post-hoc test are as follows. The low score group showed a significant difference between pretest and posttest scores compared to the medium-low test score group ( mean difference = 1.21, p = 0.000), the medium-high test score group ( mean difference = 2.28, p = 0.000), and the high test score group ( mean difference = 3.99, p = 0.00). The medium-low test score group was significantly different from the medium-high ( mean difference = 1.07, p = 0.000) and high ( mean difference = 2.78, p = 0.000) test score groups, and the medium-high test score group was significantly different from the high test group ( mean difference = 1.71, p = 0.000). When running the one-way ANOVA with the outliers included, the only difference in significance found in the results for any of the analyses occurred between the medium-low and medium-high groups. With the outliers included in the analysis, there was